Interview: Berries

Having blown us away many a time with the raw passion of their energy-fuelled live shows (including playing for us at The Finsbury and a special acoustic set for us on Hoxton Radio), London trio Berries are fast becoming the next big thing, and have just released another slice of fantastic alt-rock with new single ‘Faults’.

We caught up with Holly from the band to talk influences, plans and spare trousers!

For those who don’t know, could you tell me who Berries are and what you do? We are a three piece rock band based in London, consisting of Holly on lead vocals and guitar, Lauren on Bass and Lucie on drums!

And how did you all initially get together and start creating music?Me (Holly) and Lucie had been jamming for a while and then Lauren moved up to London. We grew up together and she is awesome on guitar, so I approached her about joining us on bass. She was really up for it and we went from there! We share quite a few musical influences and we always wanted to play in a band together, so it was great timing!

Your fantastic new single ‘Faults’ is out now, can you tell us a bit about what it’s about and what inspired you to write it? Absolutely, it’s pretty sarcastic… I was inspired to write it after watching The Hours which is an amazing film! The whole idea of being ‘perfect’ and ‘faultless’, and how people always place far too much importance on that when really it makes no difference what so ever!

And how would you say it differs from your previous releases?It’s definitely slower in tempo and more reflective than our other releases. We tried some reverse guitars and a lot more harmonies, so we just played around with more effects on this track.

You’ve been compared to the likes of The Breeders, but who would you say are you main musical influences?Good question! As a band, we like to think we are channelling some Sleater Kinney, with a kick of Subways and a splash of Biffy Clyro,

And over the last couple of years, you’ve received lots of praise from the likes of John Kennedy and Tom Robinson, which must have been super exciting! But what challenges have you faced as a new band trying to be heard and gain attention from the industry?Yeah we absolutely love their support! We have been pretty lucky with opportunities, but as with every band we just put everything we have into our live shows and write music that we are excited about as a band and hope everyone else likes it! It’s such a great scene in London at the moment so we are excited to be part of it, constantly surrounded by amazing bands and musicians!!

You’ve wowed us many times with your energy-fuelled live shows, but are there any particular gigs that stand out as a highlight for you?Thanks! Well, we absolutely loved playing your night supporting Rews at The Finsbury, and also Camden Rocks Festival which was pretty special, but overall I think it has to be when we sold out The Black Heart in Camden… That was a really amazing night for us as a band!

And having travelled up and down the country for many gigs, do you have any tour survival tips?Always carry spares of everything!!! In our case, drum kick pedals and trousers! We were playing Head For The Hills Festival last July and Lucie’s kick pedal broke, she continued on without it and we made it to the end of the track but then when she ran to try and find a spare, she flew backwards on her arse and grass stained her trousers and her glasses flew off! This was mid-set with a tent full of people wondering what the hell was going on! It was amazing, we still burst into laughter now about it!

As we’re a new music-focused site, are there any other upcoming bands or artists that you’d recommend we check out?Definitely check out Nina Fine she is an incredible singer/songwriter, and also we’re getting really into Bloom Twins.

And, finally, what does the rest of 2018 have in store for Berries?We’re constantly writing new music and recording so definitely some new releases! We head out on a tour with Scruff Of The Neck in March and we will be visiting Brighton, Liverpool, Manchester and London where we will be playing a headline show at The Camden Assembly and then we have some festival appearances lined up, and we are currently in the middle of planning an Autumn UK Tour, so nice and busy!!

Huge thanks to Berries for answering our questions!

‘Faults’, the new track from Berries, is out now. And you can catch them live next month: